Marc H. Miller

Despite my longtime interest in New York art from the 1970s, I somehow never imagined delving into an artistic process called, quite literally, “rectal realism.” However, last week, I found myself in a small room at the Gershwin Hotel at “Fresh Faces from the 1970s” a film screening and discussion, watching artist Neke Carson painting “I love you” with a paintbrush shoved in his butt.

Sitting in the New Museum theater last Thursday night with an audience full of old-school punk and avant-garde musicians and artists such as Alan W. Moore, Coleen Fitzgibbon and Becky Howland, who were all a part of Collaborative Projects, the artist collective that founded ABC No Rio and organized the Times Square Show, I witnessed a generation of New York art and culture defining their own historical importance.

Marc H. Milleris the man behind an exhibition that is currently going on at the Charles P. Stevenson Library at Bard College in upstate New York, The Presidential Election of 1912 in Cartoons. Drawn from his personal collection these images provide a window into the world of US Presidential politics a hundred years ago when Theodore Roosevelt, who was a Republican and a “Progressive” ran in a hotly contested race. As we gear up for the 2012 elections, these images are a useful reminder about the down and dirty world of politics, what we can expect in the year to come and political mudslinging is nothing new.